battered - quotes and descriptions to inspire creative writing

The skin is battered and my emotions are weeping behind the anger, the righteous demands of my true self for dignity... but my soul is the same as it was when I was a young child. Your skin is perfect other than the bruising on your knuckles and behind your anger is weeping too, though so buried you aren't aware of its true source. And your soul is a child too, still perfect and in there somewhere. Yet you are choosing to act in such monstrous ways that you are building the brain of a monster... and for that reason, at the first chance I get, I will leave you forever.

Battered, they called it. Such a simple word for a simple idea. But this was not simple. Her sense of self, once a high and proud feeling of one destined for good things, now felt as bruised as her abdomen and as broken as the mirror she stood in front of. She wiped the dried blood from her pallid skin and stared into her own empty eyes. She barely recognized herself. Who was that in there now and why did she stay? She gazed around the now deserted apartment at the broken and strewn possessions, were they any different to herself? She stifled a sob with the scuffed palm of her hand and sunk to the floor.

He wore long sleeves and long pants even in July. She never hit his face or hurt his hands. He kept her secret out of misplaced loyalty perhaps, or was it fear? She had been there when he got kicked out of the home. She had been sweet then, loving, caring. He didn't mind that she was older, it had made him feel safe having her in charge. She paid the bills, did the shopping and drove the car. After a few months she had taken his cell phone and deleted his friends from it. Then she started to control his other behaviour, where he could go, for how long and when. Once she saw that he'd take all that the beatings had begun. First a quick jab, then a blow with a baton. He was miserable so why didn't he leave? He tried to muster what was left of his broken spirit a month ago, he turned up at an old friends place and slept on the couch. The next day she had tracked him down, begged him to come back, promised to change. It lasted two days. Now he wondered if he had the strength to try again

My skin has ruptured above the growing purple blooms. Every movement hurts. In the past I have healed from a stubborn willfulness, a determination to survive come what may. This time as I stretch forwards, attempting to imagine a future, there is nothing there. I have no reserve to call upon; when the soul shatters can there be a cure? I am battered on the inside worse than any broken bone and without a doctor who can even detect the damage...

The battered limbs are what brings the attention of the doctors, yet in time don't they heal? My battered emotions, my torn insides remain open wounds unable to heal or scar. Pain that can't mend is a torment, a torture, un unending burden. Maybe it's penance, God knows I'm not perfect. If the person I love can do me such harm, I cannot exist in any full way. I will be a ghost person, living yet not fully alive...

Ryan, with your fists you break something science has yet to discover, weigh or measure. You take my love and use it as a weapon against my own soul, an invisible weapon to kill something so elusive. This isn't poetry or religion, this is what I know to be true. I am more than the flesh you use as a punching bag, more than the bones set in plaster to heal. The visible battering is what garners the attention, while the soul is left to bleed.

There is no movement without pain. The bruises are long and thin like the cricket bats they used. I scream out to the empty room unable to tell if the bones are broken. Without my phone there is no choice but to move, to at least get out into the open where rescue is possible.

I hold my arm to the light, my skin ghostly in the early morning glow. The worst of the bruises are his grip marks; how he likes me to be trapped while he rages and screams. There is a cut above my left eye, the blood already brown and dried and my abdomen feels like my guts are on fire. I try to recall what happened but nothing comes, as if last night was a movie and the recording has been erased.

Why is it a girl with bruises is a victim and a guy is a trouble-maker? Every time I get battered fighting off the gangs there isn't a person in town that wants to make eye-contact. I'm not a freak; I'm a freakin' hero and these bruises are the only medals of honour I'll ever get.